Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday December 02, 2012 @08:24AM
from the not-fixed-enough-for-me dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Washington Post reports that Apple has finally unveiled their new version of iTunes, overhauling its look and feel and integrating it more closely with the company's iCloud Internet- storage service with one of the biggest upgrades Apple has made to the program with 400 million potential users since its debut more than a decade ago. The new design of iTunes moves away from the spreadsheet format that Apple has featured since its debut and adds more art and information about musicians, movies and television shows. It also adds recommendation features so users can find new material. According to David Pogue of the NY Times Apple has fixed some of the dumber design elements that have always plagued iTunes. 'For years, the store was represented only as one item in the left-side list, lost among less important entries like Radio and Podcasts. Now a single button in the upper-right corner switches between iTunes's two personalities: Store (meaning Apple's stuff) and Library (meaning your stuff).' Unfortunately, Apple hasn't fixed the Search box. As before, you can't specify in advance what you're looking for: an app, a song, a TV show, a book. Whatever you type into the Search box finds everything that matches, and you can't filter it until after you search. It feels like a two-step process when one should do. 'Improvements in visual navigation and a more logical arrangement of tools are good, but for me the biggest positive within iTunes 11 remains its vastly improved performance on all three Macs I've tested it on, including a relatively ancient five-year-old MacBook,' writes Jonny Evans."

The layout on the top bar helps to separate out: player from store from device management. I will admit I do like the sidebar with the old layout for familiarity.

Anyway I think the big difference is that more of the functionality is exposed on the interface, sort of like an office application. I think they are assuming that iTunes user base is sort of stable and they can make things less obvious. That's a typical Apple pattern:

lots of new users = aim for obviousnesslots of experienced users = decrease obviousness and increase features

I was looking at an artists website, and clicked on the link to buy an album. It too me to the iTunes website. OK I thought, I'll try it. Except that I couldn't. To actually buy the album it said I had to do so through the iTunes software. Whoops. I guess I won't be buying anything from iTunes at all then.

You know, 'cause I run GNU/Linux.

It doesn't matter how fast the software is, if I am required to use it to buy shit, I ain't buying it. Websites work as store front ends for many other people, so why not Apple?

For one thing, I seem to remember finding a few pieces of music that are available on iTunes but unavailable or "album only" on Amazon MP3 and Google Play Store. For another, people occasionally buy entertainment works other than music. Which OS-agnostic store carries movies that can be bought, downloaded, and played offline?

I was looking at an artists website, and clicked on the link to buy an album. It too me to the iTunes website. OK I thought, I'll try it. Except that I couldn't. To actually buy the album it said I had to do so through the iTunes software. Whoops. I guess I won't be buying anything from iTunes at all then.

You know, 'cause I run GNU/Linux.

It doesn't matter how fast the software is, if I am required to use it to buy shit, I ain't buying it. Websites work as store front ends for many other people, so why not Apple?

Did you contact the artist and let him know that? If not, then your 'vote with your wallet' ballot was not submitted.

Because there are a lot more than five. Android, which uses the same kernel as GNU/Linux, is beating iOS on phones, neck and neck on 7-10" tablets, and about to beat it handily on game consoles this coming April unless Apple gets apps onto Apple TV pronto.

Because there are a lot more than five. Android, which uses the same kernel as GNU/Linux, is beating iOS on phones, neck and neck on 7-10" tablets, and about to beat it handily on game consoles this coming April unless Apple gets apps onto Apple TV pronto.

And now the real facts.1) Android is ahead on phones.2) Apple is ahead on tablets (55% to Andorid's 44%).3) Apple is way ahead of Android on games.4) iOS is actually the biggest games platform there is. Selling more games than any other platform.5) There's an announcement of an Android console shipping next April. It's effect on the market is entirely unknown. But tepples hopes it turns everything around.6) Tepples also wants a pony.

As a PC user, always found Apple's software beyond the OS baffling and counterintuitive, probably because they hide what they are doing. Something as simple as moving and saving songs to my phone seems like an excercise in frustration - syncing is not backing up for some reason and I always end up with duplicate songs or apps from other family members' devices. If they didn't have to hide the file system.

Amazing that a company that makes decent hardware and a decent OS and ok apps can't make decent software. Hope this update fixes some of the bullshit.

Something as simple as moving and saving songs to my phone seems like an excercise in frustration

That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite. It's designed so that the user shouldn't have to "move and save songs to their phone". iTunes should just take care of it for them.

I always end up with duplicate songs or apps from other family members' devices.

It sounds like you're using a single user account on your computer for multiple users. Rather than expect every application on your system invent their own ways of dealing with multiple users, you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.

Granted, iTunes is by no means perfect, and the sharp corners show through in some cases, but if you're looking at an Apple product and thinking "I can't do X manually", it's probably because you have an XY problem [stackoverflow.com], and they are solving X while you are asking about Y. X in this case being listening to your music on your phone and Y being manually putting them there.

Because the visitor wanted to charge his phone, and iTunes "helpfully" started. Or because I want to share one song with a given visitor.

That wouldn't do what you claim it does. The reasons are a bit convoluted, but basically, there are two ways to manage an iDevice through iTunes: 1) Automatic Syncing and 2) Manually Managing it.

If you have it set to auto-sync, then it ties your device to a specific computer, and if you plug it into any other computer, a warning will pop up in iTunes that says, "Hey, this iDevice belongs to another computer, if you sync it here you lose everything and start over," and gives you options to cancel, sync & erase, or transfer over purchased songs that the computer is authorized to play (e.g., iTunes has the iTunes Store Account info for already) but that aren't already actually present on the computer. None of these would lead to duplicate tracks on your computer. Do nothing and the phone will charge while the dialog is up. Hit cancel and the phone will charge without syncing. It's simply not possible for the type of syncing you describe to happen in the "helpful" manner you describe. Also, in this scenario you can't transfer a single song to the user's iDevice since all syncing is automatic.

Then there's manual management. Here, it never syncs unless you tell it to. In this case, simply plugging in the device would not cause a sync operation at all. You could (on all devices except iPhones and Shuffles), copy over a single track from your library to there iDevice in this scenario, but it wouldn't copy anything to your computer without you manually dragging it from the iDevice to your Library in iTunes.

So basically, nothing you said makes much sense. Active intervention from the user is required to make their iDevice do anything at all with a copy of iTunes that is not their own, period. That's not to say that you didn't at some point run into a bug that led to multiple copies of tracks, but it's not happening the way you claim. iTunes just doesn't work that way.

I had a PDF on my phone i jsut downloaded, i wanted to view it on my non cellular ipad. they both have wifi, i should be able to transfer anything between them without need of a third party, be it cloud, wifi AP, etc. They should be able to effortlessly talk to each other with no outside influence at all. They are 100% technically capable of this behavior. It may come as a surprise to you, but not all of us relish the idea of filtering our digital life thorugh the cloud unecessarily. I shouldnt have to be c

That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite. It's designed so that the user shouldn't have to "move and save songs to their phone". iTunes should just take care of it for them.

Most phones, especially Apple phones where there is no SD card slot, have limited space available so there must be some way to select which ones you want to sync. By default iTunes just tries to sync everything as soon as you add it to your library, filling your phone up immediately.

iTunes does actually support manual syncing. It is the only option if you have multiple devices and want different songs on each of them.

Rather than expect every application on your system invent their own ways of dealing with multiple users, you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.

But then you have to buy the same stuff four or five times so everyone in the family can ha

Most phones, especially Apple phones where there is no SD card slot, have limited space available so there must be some way to select which ones you want to sync. By default iTunes just tries to sync everything as soon as you add it to your library, filling your phone up immediately.

iTunes does actually support manual syncing. It is the only option if you have multiple devices and want different songs on each of them.

Yes, I know all that and the fact that manual selection is sometimes necessary is

But most people don't have enough music to fill their devices and most people don't want different songs on different devices.

Now there are two giant assumptions. It isn't just music people put on their devices either. A 720p 45 minute TV show is about 1.3GB, a 1080p movie is in the 8GB range. Lots of people have 16GB devices with no way to expand them, and that "16GB" is actually 14.9GB due to 2^10 sizing, plus it has to store the OS, apps and so forth.

But most people don't have enough music to fill their devices and most people don't want different songs on different devices.

Now there are two giant assumptions. It isn't just music people put on their devices either. A 720p 45 minute TV show is about 1.3GB, a 1080p movie is in the 8GB range. Lots of people have 16GB devices with no way to expand them, and that "16GB" is actually 14.9GB due to 2^10 sizing, plus it has to store the OS, apps and so forth.

I have not read the iTunes TOS but Google specifically allow it when you buy anything from Play. After all, if I buy a CD everyone in my family can listen to it. They don't have to borrow my CD player when they want to hear it.

OK, seems to be some misinformation going around.

Syncing one account to multiple devices belonging to family members is almost certainly not Copyright Infringement. While I haven't read the Google Play TOS, I assume that it and iTunes are actually pretty similar with Apple likely being only slightly more restrictive if at all. You can authorize up to 5 different computers (or separate user accounts on a single computer) with an iTunes Store Account and any of these computers/separate user accounts will be

Yes you can but it is all about how you use the accounts. Each family member should have their own AppleID to use for almost everything (iMessage, email, Find My iPhone, sync, iCloud, etc.). The exception is: do not use that AppleID for iTunes store purchases. Instead create a family AppleID and set all family member's iTunes apps, and iDevices to use the family AppleID for iTunes store purchases. Then each family member gets to manage their own media library and anything one purchases anyone else can e

iTunes does actually support manual syncing. It is the only option if you have multiple devices and want different songs on each of them.

Umm, no. Each device has its own unique sync settings. If you dont want to have different itunes libraries for everyone, you can still sync different playlists/albums/artists/songs to each device automatically from one library.

Android lets you have multiple Google accounts associated with each device so you can have a family one for app purchases and then everyone also has their own individual ones for email and other personal stuff.

Ignoring the potential licensing/copyright infringement angle (I believe Apple considers sharing within your family to be just fine; hence the existence of the Home Sharing feature) your Apple devices can in fact have separate AppleIDs for app downloads and email/messaging/iCloud. You can even use multiple different accounts for the store itself, though you have to go to settings and log out/in to switch accounts (only when you want to buy an app for the account you're not currently logged in with; updates don't care what account you're logged in with). My mom gets access to all my apps this way, while she also has her own account for when she wants to buy something I don't already have (so that I don't get charged for silly sudoku apps I won't ever use).

Apple makes great software; its just that they make the worst Windows software you could ever use. iLife is half the reason why I was using a Mac for so many years. General rule of thumb for all Apple software:If it ends in.exe, it will be slow, bloated, and unintuitiveIf it ends in.app, it will be fast, slick, and makes sense

I agree, some of the changes in iTunes 11 are downright baffling. For example, if you want to sync updated apps, you now need to do a "backup" instead of "sync". I suppose that makes syncing faster, but it makes little sense otherwise.

Set your phone to "Manage manually" instead of Library sync. Then you can just drag and drop stuff onto it. No more syncing weirdness.
Syncing is for people with a small amount of music that will fit neatly on one device. If you buy new things on the phone or on the computer, it doesn't matter, they will always be exact mirrors of each other after syncing (and with iCloud, you don't even necessarily have to sync any more).

No, syncing can be incredibly powerful for people who have more music than fits on their device. Smart playlists are incredible for updating your device without adding any manual effort in your part at all (aside from setting up your smart playlists once, of course).

Stuff like "sync songs I haven't listened to in the past week" or "sync 7GB of my top-rated songs" or "sync everything I've listened to over 100 times, and fill the rest of the space with songs I haven't rated yet" or any AND/NOT combination of criteria you can imagine: "sync all my 4-star and higher rated songs, and sync any 3-star songs I haven't listened to in the past month, and sync everything in my favorites list regardless, do not sync anything I've listened to more than 200 times, and then fill the remaining space on my device with songs I haven't rated yet".

Every time you plug in your phone to charge in the evening, you can automatically end up with a new selection of music perfectly tailored to you with no effort whatsoever despite the fact that you couldn't fit it all on the device at once.

Apple didn't write the original iTunes. Apple bought SoundJam MP [wikipedia.org] from Casady and Green. I still remember using SoundJam fondly. For its time, it was way ahead of the curve (which is why Apple bought it, I'm sure). SJ and iTunes are similar, but iTunes was redesigned as a store as much as a music player. SJ just wanted to help import, organize, and play music.

Not entirely correct. The underlying system is indeed Darwin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) [wikipedia.org] ), but all the GUI-stuff is proprietary. And quite obviously all the GUI-stuff is a part of the OS and therefore you cannot say OSX is BSD.

You're probably correct. But if I buy a song on my phone, I was expecting sync to transfer it to my computer. To sync/transfer content basically. iCloud kinda fixes the downfalls of a lost phone but the only time I connect to a computer is todo an OS upgrade and instead of being one step, it's a series and even done correctly, all manner of screwups occur - phone populated with other people's apps and that junk.

As a PC user, I absolutely hate iTunes. I stay away from Apple products specifically because of iTunes.

My kids have iPod touches, and I loath having to go into iTunes and update their software/apps.

Well, you don't have to do that any more. Remember the whole "PC Free" thing from a year or two ago? You can update the OS, apps, whatever, on the device itself, and use iCloud for backup. If you ever have to reset the device for some reason it will just redownload everything automatically once you put in your iCloud login. As long as your kids' iPods can run iOS 5 or later, you never need to connect to iTunes ever again.

Too many of the same old flaws are still there. For example, it insists on sorting artist rather than composer in many views. If I have an album where two different pieces have different featured soloist artists, it insists in some views as treating it as two separate albums, while other views may not. For larger works, this can be a problem, like the complete symphonies of Haydn.

Groupings remain the red-headed stepchild, poorly used, despite being the only way to logically group together movements of a larger work within an album.

It introduced a few new flaws. In playlist view, it appears trivial to turn on shuffle and start playing a random piece. In library/songs view, that no longer appears possible. Multiple testing shows it always plays the first piece of the playlist, then shuffles.

The column browser is gone, just gone inside a playlist. I have some very large playlists. I want to be able to use the column browser within that playlist. I now have to go outside the playlist to the library view and use that, hoping I remember correctly the criteria that form the smart playlists.

I never had much of a performance issue, so I can't speak to that, but the first thing I turned off was album art based views. If I wanted an album, I'd pick it from the column browser.

I want to *choose* my sort and list criteria. If I want to listen to Brahms, I shouldn't have to remember that the conductor of my most of my Brahms is Bernstein, but I have other Brahms conducted by someone else. Or they may choose to list the featured soloist as the artist, especially on concertos. I look for composer long before I look at performer.

In the new album view, I see no way to change the secondary criteria displayed from artist (confusing, useless to me) to a more useful field, such as compo

The column browser is gone, just gone inside a playlist. I have some very large playlists. I want to be able to use the column browser within that playlist. I now have to go outside the playlist to the library view and use that, hoping I remember correctly the criteria that form the smart playlists.

I just tried this and if you select a playlist, you can still go into View / Column Browser / Show Column Browser

Odd, completely grayed out for me. Might be the difference that I'm using smart playlists, not regular ones. I create playlists based on combinations of genres or comments put in the comments field (Moody is a nice tool for me).

Even better, checking each smart playlist, making sure I was in list view, all but one, column browser was disabled, menu option grayed out, key shortcut does nothing. One playlist, the column browser was forced on, couldn't turn it off.

This is now pointing to a bug I suspect.

After going through it, some where it was forced off are now forced on. Yes, I'll be reporting this as a bug based on what you've told me.

For example, it insists on sorting artist rather than composer in many views.

Have you tried playing with the sort options under the "View -> View Options" Menu? This menu has a drop-down that lets you control the primary sort, and a sub-section to refine how to sort beyond that (including "sort composer"). Perhaps this is the option you want?

Take an album. Have two different featured soloists. The album is now split into two separate "albums" in album based view, one with the pieces with one soloist, the other with those with the other soloist. If you listen to concertos, this is a problem since they so often have a featured soloist.

The view you're referring to is more about some of the basic views I ended up using. I wanted to use the other views in older iTunes. I did. But it insisted on emphasizing artist rather than composer, even tho

7 Features Apple Killed Off in iTunes 11 [cnet.com]. I was originally annoyed by removing the ability to edit the 'gapless' state of files (removing that one just seems stupid), but as no other player I use on any other platform supports the feature, I gave up caring.

I hadn't really noticed the distinctions in winamp, but winamp is usually what I'm playing at work so I'm only barely paying attention.

The lack of gapless more sticks out on the music players of my tablet, and the cd-rom player in my car, which are the two times I'm more likely to listen to classical. If the CD broke the tracks up (a-la most recordings of Rite of Spring and Firebird) the gaps are very frustrating and I'm going to slowly re-rip most of them to be single-track (at least iTunes hasn't gotten r

Tried this on my test machine, and it appears to be true. What The Hell. This completely wrecks my workflow for creating playlists (which was to have library open in one window, playlist in another, and to drag files from the library into the right place on the playlist).

For fnord's sake. It seems that these days every update from Apple ends up just frustrating me. Not installing this one either, just like Safari 6 (no RSS, again WTF?)

The gapless field was removed because it is for the most part needlessly redundant. For some time now, the iTunes application and Apple's iDevices playback as gapless by default already [apple.com], regardless of whether the gapless field is checked.

In fact, for some time it's been difficult or impossible to disable gapless playback. But this is an entirely different complaint.

That part of DJ is still there (from what I read). What is missing now is the way in which anybody (if you opened up your iTunes folders) could request tracks from the outside. Either they got rid of that for lack of use, or more likely because it opened up security holes that they didn't want to keep playing catch-up on closing.

I do like the fact that you can have it generally shuffle, but prioritize (weighted shuffle) those with higher ratings.

Once I figured out how to get it to sort my albums by title rather than artist again, I have to say I'm getting used to the minimalist interface. iTunes has always been minimal on features, so it never made sense that its UI was such a mess. Now it's more, uh, pushbutton-y? Feels like it was designed for touchscreens, oddly enough. I definitely like the new pop-out Visualizer, now I can properly have that running on my secondary display without jumping back and forth between the full interface. The only thing I'm not digging is how double-clicking an album immediately starts playing it instead of opening the song list. There's actually no way to get to that song list anymore, you have to start the album and then skip to the track you want, else you have to sort through the Songs view which includes your entire library. Oh well.

Correction: Apparently the album view does have a neat expanding songlist if you single-click on an album, there is just an obnoxious delay which is why I didn't notice it before. Double-clicking still only plays the album without opening this list though, so it's now a two-step process. -1 intuitiveness.

I got my iPod nano 1G replaced with a 6G in the battery recall program, and it feels like a downgrade.

- The interface defaults to the useless album art screen, so that's one extra action every time you want to do anything.

- A touchscreen is way inferior to the clickwheel. It's now impossible to operate the iPod without looking at it, even for simple things like skipping a track. So I attached a remote controller which halves its battery life.

- the touchscreen also means that you have to press the button to wake up the screen before you can do anything. Two actions before you get to a useful screen.

- Some idiot has decided that when you're playing music from a playlist, you then can't easily navigate back to the playlist from the default (album art) screen. You have to go all the way back to Music->Playlist->select the list you're in->scroll down to wherever you are.

I really like the redesign visually and speed wise. It's impressive since I haven't used Itunes regularly in half a decade. My main program of choice has been Foobar2000. It's instantaneous in its library even with 100 thousand songs. When I heard the new itunes was much faster and saw the beautiful screenshots I had to check it out.Itunes 10 opening speed with a large library was well over 15 seconds on an SSD. Itunes 11 is now around 2. Foobar2000 is about half a second, but still, very impressive.

Hells bells, they removed the progress bar on mini player. I don't use my partner's iMac all that much, but I do use it to manage voice diction and to sync podcasts onto our iPod. Some of my dictation files are long. Without a progress bar, it's really difficult to note and return to critical thoughts. But I only used iTunes as a stopgap measure, so I can sit back and enjoy the suffering of others more deeply invested.

What a triumph of populist design over broad-minded utility. There's a fair amount of frustration, annoyance, and anger out there over Apple's random feature regression of the moment. I used to tell people to install Ubuntu because, you know, we had continuity all figured out. Since the Unity debacle, I keep my mouth shut.

Apple also removed the multiple window feature. So much for workflow equity. How do people live in a world with no feature continuity? I would have never guessed at the outset of PC era thirty years ago that things could go this direction, and people would stand for it. It's pretty much my personal definition of low self-esteem to see someone suffer a major setback in their workflow equity and go "oh, well". Maybe I should have completed Learned Helplessness 101 after all. I'm starting to think it really is a life skill _and_ you save a fortune in Tums.

The foolishness we all felt back in the day that upgrades were built on top of what you had already delivered. Turns out we could have just randomly discarded any feature that bored us or seemed inconvenient to maintain, and without any explanation to the customer, either. Shit, did we ever do things the hard way.

The article is also in error. They found shortly after release that you could limit the scope of the search field to the selected library, a wildcard match within that library category, or a title match within that category under your library. I suspect this information is a few days too stale. You just select the dropdown in the search box, and deselect the 'Search Entire Library' option.

No, that's not what they are talking about. This is about searching in the iTunes store: there is still no way to indicate you are searching for an app, a song or a TV series, and you get all of them in the search results. When in the iTunes store, the search field has no drop down.

And the drop down in the search field when browsing your library was already there in iTunes 10, with the All / Artist / Album / Composer / Song options. They just added the "Search Entire Library" option now.

I guess most people haven't noticed, because nobody else has said anything about it. The link you describe are so far to the right of the song listings that there's no chance of accidentally clicking it. I actually had to open it up to see if you were right, and I've used it every day since Thursday. Furthermore, I actually like it! It's a really quick way to see more songs by an artist, without having to leave your library.

Regardless of what you think about it, it's only two links on the screen at any given time. As for "buy now" on everything in the store, well...it's a store. What do you expect?

Does that work with the new iPods and iPhones? Because frankly I'm tired of dealing with customers that have a buggy iTunes, I swear iTunes on Windows is probably the most buggy thing I've had to deal with in awhile, so if there is something I could give them and say "If it gets buggy again use this instead" that would be quite helpful.

Generally for third party software (WinAmp, CopyTransmanager) to be able to sync to iPhone and iPod Touch (and I assume iPad), it requires Apple drivers, which are installed when you install iTunes (along with a bLoat load of background services). Supposedly you can separate the installer into components, and just install the drivers, but I haven't had luck with that. Copytrans Drivers installer will automate the process http://download.cnet.com/CopyTrans-Drivers-Installer/3000-18546_4-75300288.html [cnet.com]

Incidentally, if it keeps prompting you for a password that you keep cancelling, the answer is apparently to delete all stored web content... in Safari. (It worked for me.) Whether or not it is good that other applications apparently have unrestricted access to your Safari cookies is left as an exercise for the reader.

are you looking at the same iTunes 11 I am? in music mode, it just shows me a player on the top bar with simple controls(Previous track, play, next track), a volume slider and search.

Then a mode sensitive bar where I can switch between various types of media, different categories in those types of media, and any devices connected. Then a simple interface for picking items from that category.

Compare that to the default WinAmp install which is kind of a bloody mess.

That's the problem, the UI is so cluttered the user is forced to switch modes just to clear it up.

It doesn't sense to present the iTunes store and whatever devices you're managing right alongside the music playback controls. It's unlikely a user will want to be working with the two separate tasks at the same exact time. Presenting all the information at once just wastes space and confuses the user.

I just want my music presented in multiple lists so I can find what I want quickly, and basic playback controls

What the fuck are you on? How is it so tightly integrated like IE? Does another music player not work if you delete iTunes? Does deleting iTunes causes your computer not to run, can't install updates and any number of OS essential tasks to stop working?

Jesus, so you don't like it, but do you have to throw in all the lies as well?

Quicktime is a core part of the OS. The iTunes library is accessed by other software, both from Apple and 3rd parties. It is about as well integrated as IE was, in that you can remove it but doing so will break things.

No, I certainly wouldn't complain if they, say, made the device act as a USB drive so I could just copy the damn files or use whatever media player/manager I wanted to. But fanboys always try to dismiss everyone else as fanboys first, like a kind of pre-emptive strike.

No, I certainly wouldn't complain if they, say, made the device act as a USB drive so I could just copy the damn files or use whatever media player/manager I wanted to.

In what is supposed to be a discussion about iTunes 11, you're now criticising the device, and want to use something other than iTunes. QED. No chance to iTunes would make you happy because you're an Android fanboy.

But fanboys always try to dismiss everyone else as fanboys first, like a kind of pre-emptive strike.

So now you're accusing me of being a fanboy. Way to make a point and condemn yourself with it in a single sentence.

For me it's nothing to do with a preemptive strike. You've just made it plain in every Apple discussion on Slashdot that you are arguing from an Android fanboy perspective. And you'r

I know many people have suggested songbird in the past. I was able to pretty well ignore the functions I didn't want, so it didn't bother me. "Mac alternatives to iTunes" turns up lots of sites that suggest a few other options.

Or as an alternative to Songbird on Windows which doesn't do Podcasts (and doesn't look like it ever will) Miro http://www.getmiro.com/ [getmiro.com] is pretty good, especially if you pair it up with Winamp http://www.winamp.com/ [winamp.com] for Shoutcast streaming radio.

Given that the new copy is also encoded with a higher bitrate and presumably a new version of the encoder with a better tuned psychoacoustic model, I'd think it merits the 30 cent upgrade fee even apart from the lack of digital restrictions management.

IANAn Apple user, but isn't there a way to remove drm's from Apple music, by burning the tracks to disc then copying them back from the disc?

I stopped paying for music after cd's. Just rebuilt my mp3 collection in less than 2 months by borrowing/ripping library CDs. After having backed up over 9000 tracks to flashdrive, I'm done for awhile.:-)

IANAn Apple user, but isn't there a way to remove drm's from Apple music, by burning the tracks to disc then copying them back from the disc?

I stopped paying for music after cd's. Just rebuilt my mp3 collection in less than 2 months by borrowing/ripping library CDs. After having backed up over 9000 tracks to flashdrive, I'm done for awhile.:-)

Yes, you can do that. You can also pay a small upgrade fee (about $0.20 per track in the US store I think?) to upgrade all of your prior DRM purchases to the new unencumbered versions.

Personally I dislike the AAC tracks which are incompatible with everything, which is the trouble with patent encumbered formats [No MP3 has nothing like the same problems].

I haven't had trouble playing Apple's AAC files in Windows media player or VLC, so I'm under the impression they're not too difficult to find a player for. And if anything MP3s have worse patent issues than AAC. MP3s require a licensing fee for selling encoders, decoders, and any files that are encoded with MP3. AAC, however, does not require that you may a license for encoded files.

I also find it kind of sad that those who bought those DRM (128-bit) laden tracks are not getting those tracks either upgraded to a higher quality version...or having the DRM removed.

Generally they have enabled users to upgrade. There are a few tracks were were sold as DRM-encumbered and then removed from the store, and some of those haven't been upgraded, but I know I can re-download my old purchases without DRM at 256kbps whenever I want.

I have a feeling the OP was trying to be sarcastic. No one in any kind of even mostly-sane state of mind would just throws desktop and laptop computers in the trash just for an updated iTunes - version.

I've only spent half a day with it, but I'd have to say, no. It's as resource-intensive as ever, the UI still freezes intermittently when there's any processing going on at all, and it crashed completely when trying to play a short video.

On the other hand, it managed to resurrect my copy of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog which iTunes 10 ate. (The player said I hadn't downloaded it and wouldn't play, and the store said that I had downloaded it and wouldn't download. iTunes11 re-downloaded it for me. And c

Did they fix the bugs, the performance issues, the crashes, the thrashing of the library, the sync issues, the poor UI, the hiding of fields when they don't work properly making it near impossible to troubleshoot, the unresponsive UI, the resource hog?

Most of that they do seem to have fixed or at least made better. The new one is much faster for me on a large library, and also I think the UI is much better and clearer once you get used to it.